HTML.co.uk

Many of the web designers and developers have been involved in creating web pages for years now and the best part is that one person alone is capable of creating a number of websites with any number of pages. The thought only of attempting to convert all of them is so overwhelming. But if your basic method of creating these websites has been either editors or hand coding then you would probably be having web pages that are not valid XHTML and at the same time make use of old HTML styles such as font tag etc. instead of the cascading style sheets.

The latest iteration of web designing is XHTML + CSS. The main advantage here is that, it allows the web designer to place his content in a document which is absolutely separate from the appearance or how the content should actually look. XHTML is easy to learn especially for those who are quite familiar with the HTML and at the same time is quite compatible and flexible with the databases, dynamic content and also to any kind of future developments in that field. CSS gives a lot of flexibility to the web designers in designing the look of the pages. Therefore, XHTML and CSS joined hands and collectively became XHTML+CSS.

The biggest issue that comes is here is the amount of work and effort that would be involved in converting those already existing websites to the XHTML+CSS format. But the fact is that it is really not that hard the way it appears and also the results obtained would be highly beneficial for the highly pro-active and forward thinking developers.

The advantages of using XHTML+CSS over the old HTML style are many; the most important would be maintenance. The sites are easy to maintain when designed using HTML+CSS as there are less number of tags that would be messing up with the display of the code. And also when the same design is passed on to the next designer, it would easier and simpler for him to understand the entire code. Also the web pages designed using HTML+CSS are faster and do not waste much time in downloading as these files are less bloated than the ones designed using their old counter parts.

There is less number of tables that are involved here because most of the design decisions are passed on to the CSS now, therefore less complexities. It is not only difficult to understand but also edit someone else’s designed tables, which in the case of XHTML+CSS is being handled by CSS. This concept is fairly new and the designers who have already got involved in using XHTML+CSS while designing their web pages are closer to the cutting edge as compared to the ones who don’t.

Instead of upgrading your editors you can just clean up your HTML by using making use of certain tools such as HTML Tidy. This tool will clean up your code entirely and the final result would be valid XHTML. And finally you just need to design the Cascading Style Sheet and attach to the XHTML produced earlier. All this can be achieved in just a matter of minutes.